A select group of Alberta farmers say more needs to be done to protect their business amid mounting threats from genetically modified crops.

The issue lies with forage crops — grasses like hay and alfalfa used mostly for cattle feed — which are Canada’s largest crops by area, covering 12.8 million hectares of land, the Canadian Forage and Grasslands Association says.

So far, only rare cases of GM strains of alfalfa crops have been found growing in Alberta.

Heather Kerschbaumer would like it to stay that way.

“Keeping it out of all of Canada would be the preferred solution,” said Kerschbaumer, president of Forage Seed Canada and a forage seed grower in Fairview, about an hour north of Grande Prairie in Alberta’s Peace Country.

But that’s slowly beginning to change. Companies, including Forage Genetics and Monsanto that sell GM alfalfa, have been trying to convince jurisdictions to allow products like Roundup Ready crops to be marketed and grown. The benefit to farmers is that Roundup varieties are immune to herbicides like Roundup, so weed control is as simple as spraying the entire crop with chemicals and allowing the alfalfa to grow.

Dave Cailliau of Cailliau Farms in Enchant, about an hour northeast of Lethbridge, understands that benefit. He grows Roundup Ready sugar beets, which can be costly to keep weed free were it not for the patented GM technology.

But when it comes to alfalfa and other forage seeds, it’s different because they are pollinated by bees and, during years when crops are rotated, become a kind of weed themselves.

“If we get Roundup-ready alfalfa released in southern Alberta, now we’re going to have a hell of a time, especially since alfalfa’s an even harder crop to kill to start with,” said Cailliau, whose farm is the largest producer of alfalfa seeds in southern Alberta.

Both he and Kerschbaumer said that wouldn’t matter if the GM strains of seeds and crops could be sold, but some larger markets, such as China and Europe have zero-tolerance policies for GM products.

Kent Warnica, a hay buyer for Prairie International who sells about 60,000 tonnes of alfalfa and grass a year to Japan, Korea and China said he wouldn’t mind if GM crops were to spread across Canada, if only foreign markets would accept them.

“They’re the boss and they’re the customer, as long as they don’t want it in, we’re going to do what we can to keep it out,” Warnica said, adding his company regularly sends people to foreign countries to make the case for opening the market for GM forage.

He believes the bans on GM products are being used as a non-tariff trade barrier.

Kerschbaumer doesn’t mind some places restricting GM products. That’s because Alberta can remain a non-GM zone and benefit from having a niche product that can be sold for a premium price. But some recent moves by GM companies are worrying her.

The Canadian government has OK’d the marketing and sale of GM forage seed, but it still has to pass environmental reviews in local and provincial jurisdictions for widespread use. Forage Genetics International has managed to get past the first stage of reviews in Ontario and have begun attempting to design what they call a coexistence strategy.

In short, it’s an attempt to grow both GM and non-GM crops in the same jurisdiction. A handful of 16-hectare plots had been planted so far.

A similar attempt was made in the U.S., but a recent study from the USDA says it isn’t working.

“Anybody that tells you about coexistence, they’re full of crap. Roundup Ready and non cannot coexist in Alberta,” Cailliau said. “You can’t have Roundup ready in the south and non-Roundup ready in the north. They will intertwine.

“The fields that were completely clean before are now being infected and it’s just spreading all over.”

Cailliau said more has to be done by governments to regulate the industry, including stiffer punishments for importers who try to bring in GM seeds and mandatory screening of any forage seeds that go in the ground. But Kerschbaumer suggested that could be tough. The Alberta Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry says the federal government sets the policies and the province abides by them.

“Our government says industry is looking after it. But to them, industry is one Canadian Seed Trade Association, who has a board of directors who are all somehow tied to the big crops that are already genetically modified,” she said. A quick look at the association’s board members shows a handful of company representatives with GM affiliations — including a representative from Monsanto and other companies that stand to benefit from GM sales, such as Chinese-owned Syngenta. There are only a few names with primarily forage seed interests on the board.

Kerschbaumer said the few companies that might have the ability to vote to keep it out abstain from voting because they also market crops like soybeans and corn and canola that are already GM.

For now, all three growers have been told by Forage Genetics that they have no plans to test crops in Western Canada, but Kerschbaumer isn’t convinced.

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